‘Boxing’ Bets At Woodbine

POSTED Dec 21, 2011
By
Frank Cotolo

The Boxing Day card at Woodbine is not a celebration of boxing exotic bets. It is the day after Christmas, Dec. 26, set aside in the Great White North for the return of holiday presents to the sources of their purchases. Stores are open, traffic around the country is heavy and Woodbine offers a complete harness program.

Included in the program are two features, rare five-digit races for standardbreds in the waning weeks of a year. Both offering a $60,000 purse, the Niagara Final is for soph-filly pacers (non-winners of $50,000 as of Oct. 31, 2011) and the Valedictory Final for soph-colt pacers.

Another Watch List (WL) report also follows, though with racing dark on the holiday weekend—Dec. 24 and Dec. 25—you won’t be looking to pick up on any.

Due to the features covered in this blog we will not be posting a Weekly Harness Review until Tuesday, Dec. 27.

The Boxers

The filly pacers meeting the qualifications for the Niagara Final line up after eliminations last week. The top three finishers in each elim and one fourth-place finisher, drawn by lot, have made it to this week’s event.

The elims’ big favorites finished second, both suffering outside moves that cost them the wins. The best performance, however, came from DGs Tinkerbell, who drew post 7 for the final.

She paced every bid as good as the obvious choices but went off a little more than 8-1. She was strong on the lead for a few calls and taken over late. That race sent off a flare and with the obvious top choices here—Seascape Hanover and Carly Hollywood—we can hope for some decent odds on the 7.

We loved Audreys Dream in the Cleveland Classic a few weeks back and he faired well against tougher company there, finishing third. His “Val” elim was monstrous and he is very hard to play against to win this race. As a key for exotics we see Itrustyou following him bravely but as the probable second choice this exacta may come nowhere near a price worth playing. Keep your eyes on the exacta price, for it may turn into a low-priced overlay as the crowd looks around for unusual upsets.

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TwinSpires' horse racing author, handicapper, and podcast host, Derek Simon of Denver, Colo. offers his insightful, humorous and sometimes controversial take on the horse racing industry. He even publishes the ROI on the picks he gives out.

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A writer and editor who has been following horse racing for fifteen years. Peter has written books for the Daily Racing Form Press; Crown; and Simon and Schuster; among other publishers, and regular features in The Horseplayer Magazine.